This doesn't look too out of balance to me. More like natural selection.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with that.

We don't need guns - we just need more people like those store owners - i.e. actual communities that stand up for each other.

 

If people were like that everywhere - and if the Met weren't apparently so slow and useless - this probably wouldn't have gone as far and for so long as it has done.

 

If looters are constantly turned away from being able to loot, they'll eventually get bored, but every time they're successful it empowers them to keep going, and potentially get do more severe things.

That it wasn't a war zone. For the amount of guns in that area the entire west coast could have been wiped out.

Most people who have grown up with guns only use them as a last resort and I think those number reflect that.

When this is all said and done we will compare deaths to deaths and property damage to property damage.

Everyone needs guns! Guns are fun!

Guns are no doubt incredibly fun.

Doesn't mean they should be given to mentally unstable people though.

You shouldn't talk about the Taliban like that.

Well, no, it wasn't technically a war zone. But it isn't here, either.

 

I'm not sure that comparing the number of guns with the number of deaths is a valid way of demostrating anything. You may as well count all the kitchen knives available in London and then wonder why everyone inside the M25 isn't wandering around full of holes.

It's the only there I have to use for comparison. I can't compare how many thefts were prevented because the owner of the shop was sitting in the doorway with a shotgun and deterred a group of thugs that had in mind to loot his store. They didn't keep records of that.

My original point, I think anyway, was that you use bats and pipes and knives so why the fuck not just get guns? If you want someone dead you have ways to make it happen.

stores have insurance, tbh I'd rather Rumbelows lost a few TVs than anyone get shot

For me, the best answer I can give is, 'we don't want them.'

It's not so much a matter of hard ideology as of considered moral preference. We prefer to live in a society where the overwhelming majority of people choose not to own a tool made for killing other people, because life feels better like that. A chacun son goût, as they say.

You only don't want them because you weren't raised with them.

 

You don't want a tool for killing, but sales of baseball bats on Amazon are up over 4000%. It doesn't take a gun to kill or hurt someone. It only takes the intention to do that.

 

And I don't know about you, but I can guess what the buyers of those bats were going to do.

 

Guns serve another purpose other than killing as well. They serve as a deterrent.

quote:

You only don't want them because you weren't raised with them.

You only want them because you were. That's why I distinguished between ideology and morally informed choice. I have no right or desire to tell you that America should disarm. But neither do I think that you or anybody else has a right to tell me that the British ought to own guns.

That sums it up well. We just don't want them. We fell safer and better without. Whether we actually are who knows, but what we feel counts a lot.

but we were, well anyone of mine or manny's age ~ the major parts of laws banning handgun ownership etc were made up in/after 1987

Wow I wasn't aware of that. It has to be differences in culture. They'd (being the governmnet) would never get away with that here. And I'm amazed after finding that out that there arent gangs who have them!

tbh we don't seem to need/want them much - I know of one handgun, and that has been stored in oil for over 50 years, though there are any amount of shotguns about (I live in a fairly rural area)

I think that shooting them in the kneecaps might be a more effective deterrent.

And I'm sure that you won't complain when your insurance premiums go up to compensate.

Oh, did you think that the insurance companies are in it for the benefit of the greater good?

And they're an integral part of the marriage ceremony! :D